Parallel
"I don't believe in prison, in just holding people. There's only two possibilities: either you can be redeemed, or you can't. If you can, I'll help you every step of the way. If you can't... I'll put you down myself." Parallel is an Australian super currently active... somewhere. He was introduced to Delve's superhero team through a chance meeting with her adopted daughter Abbey (or more accurately her vigilante splinter personality "Lilly") and decided to briefly join up. He's a thrillseeker and adrenaline junkie and feels being in a team with other supers is the best way to sate those urges without getting himself killed, but seeing his new team work together he's starting to think that maybe being a "hero" wouldn't be so bad. A scant few months later, Parallel believes the jury is still out on being a "hero," but his role on the team came to an end during the Black London arc. After the Guardians' second fight with Shadowbender, Parallel captured Sapper, one of the supers Dannon had helped spring from the Liberty Super-Security Prison. She offered information in exchange for freedom, a deal the rest of the team wasn't willing to accept. Parallel, sensing a kindred spirit between the girl and the criminal he used to be, teleported her away and interrogated her on his own, and the pair relayed all intel to the Guardians through Disco. At that point, they left for parts unknown. Parallel is Wayne's former player character. Skills and Powers Jaden was a born psychic, although he possesses no "traditional" mental powers: mind control, telepathy, and the like. He merely has a radically heightened "sixth sense" that allows him to pick up mental presences up to some distance away, which helps alert him to danger. He's not sure, but this might explain his nearly-perfect memory. Over the years he learned to combine these two advantages to accelerate his own cognitive ability, leading to radically faster reflexes and thinking than most humans, and fast enough processing to make his vision pick up minute details. This is the cornerstone of his signature power, the ability to instantly train his reflex memory to match whatever he sees someone else doing. This ability is constrained by his own limitations: essentially he can only match powers normal humans or other psychics can learn to do. Still, despite this drawback, he's amassed a respectable reportoire of tricks, including a few magic spells he's seen Miss Magic cast and martial arts moves stolen from the movies. Fortunately, thanks to his enhanced thinking and reflexes, usually all he needs to do to determine whether he can mimic a technique he sees from Hollywood is to watch it done a few times. He's been disappointed on many occasions. Parallel has picked up various fighting styles and martial arts over the years, and is deadly at long range with firearms or in close with melee weapons. Thanks to his enhanced coordination he's an acrobat par excellence and one of the best stunt drivers in the world, as well as an exceptionally competent engineer. Parallel has a very defensive, agile fighting style, trying to avoid hits, as he only has a suit of carbon body armor for protection. Due to his exceptional memory and learning capability, Parallel can theoretically master quite a few more skills than those he's picked up "off the clock," such as learning languages by studying them and mimicking accents from those he talks to. Backstory Jaden (pronounced "YAY-den") was born in 1989 to a middle-class family in Sydney. He breezed through school and was a good (if not periodically "troubled") student until his mid-teenage years, during which time he fell in with a street-racing gang. As a good-looking kid and phenomenal driver, he became well-known by reputation, and despite some petty crimes and thefts was never caught. He had lived the life for less than a year when, now 17, his group had a run-in with a motorcycle gang, leaving a few in each group dead, as well as some bystanders. Jaden, as one of his team's "fighters," had a contraband gun; he felt the rest would sell him out and fled, and when the police arrived as expected had used his memory to fake an alibi, and then planted the gun in one of his traitor's houses. Shaken, he tried to "go straight" and finished high school and began to attend an engineering university, but the allure of the criminal world was too strong and he joined another gang, lured in by a woman he met while racing. The "Devils"-- the girl, their leader, was from Tasmania, of course-- seemed innocent and fun enough, and it wasn't long before Jaden fell in love with her. Charlotte had been taught shamanic magic from Aboriginal Australians native to her island and wielded it with ruthless ease. At first, Jaden, dubbed Vapula for his intellect and engineering knowledge; loved the "demonic" lifestyle and joined in with increasingly high-profile crimes; Charlotte preyed on his love of cars and stealing them was a powerful incentive. It wasn't long, however, before rival supers began to interfere, and soon after a bloody empowered fight left several dead and millions in property damage in Canberra. A furious Jaden confronted her and it turned into a fight, but before either was seriously injured Charlotte dropped a different kind of bomb: she revealed she was pregnant. Jaden fled, and within weeks had left Australia entirely, and tried to forget about the whole thing. Figuring he hadn't had much luck with crime, Jaden tried vigilantism, traveling to different countries via ship, setting up shop, and fighting crime as a "masked avenger." He took rewards when he could, shoring up his funds with the occasional theft, and gradually began to build himself back up. It didn't last long before a contact with the Devils revealed that Charlotte had found him and was tracking him down, so Jaden went briefly back to Australia to plant evidence he'd returned, and left, this time for England. He'd only been there a few weeks before running into another vigilante, a teenage girl named Lilly. The two teamed up for a few days, after which time Lilly introduced him to Delve, and he joined her team as a freelancer. Drawbacks and Complications Parallel has psychic awareness but no real psionic power, making him vulnerable to psychic attacks. Mental psionic abilities are much more effective against him. His enhanced senses also work against him to an extent; sense-dependent attacks (especially visual ones, like blinding lights) have amplified effect and are more likely to work. His sixth sense can also be "overloaded" in the presence of other psychics, causing headaches and mental strain, although it takes a couple hours for symptoms to manifest. After so far dodging arrest and capture, Parallel is extremely paranoid about his activities-- good or bad-- being traced to his "other life." He has a mental block that keeps him from using his powers while in his "normal identity." Possible in-game complications include: *Parallel's secret identity, as detailed above. He makes very few mistakes that could be traced back to "Jaden Walker," and is paranoid enough to avoid giving himself away in obvious ways: he mentally prevents himself from implicating his secret identity in any way, and his masks always have a special coating that distorts external senses so his face can't be seen. *His past could always catch up with him. Jaden's been involved with several gangs, one supervillain-tier, and didn't part well with any of them. The existence of Charlotte and their three-year-old daughter isn't something he wants anyone else to know about now. *Despite now meaning well, Parallel has criminal (especially kleptomaniacal) urges and has committed serious crimes in the past, and has a blasé attitude toward much of it (seeing no problem in stealing a car or knocking someone out if it's the best way to get something done). He doesn't believe in "karma," but that doesn't mean it doesn't believe in him. Miscellaneous Trivia * Parallel's attempts to channel his kleptomania into something more productive have made him a collector, albeit a picky one: he prefers things that remind him of or are money (such as the US's state quarters and limited runs of certain dollar coins, and updated/altered foreign currency), as well as weapons, masks, and other things that refer to his "super" life. *Billed as "Jason Walker," using false identity papers, Jaden is a successful stunt man and stunt driver in action movies, known as the "man who can do anything." He refuses to take a role where his face can be seen. *Though he'd never admit it to Exemplar, Jaden loves music and tries to spend at least one day a week performing someplace locally, such as piano bars or clubs. One of his favorite uses of his exceptional memory is recalling songs to play to meet requests. *Parallel dislikes reading (both out of time concerns and worry it might overtax his memory), generally preferring to research something on-the-spot if he needs the knowledge. One subject he refuses to read at all is political commentary, unless it matches his point of view (classical Anarchism). Category:PC Category:Supers